>>>> In hindsight, what course of action would you have preferred from UN / NATO ?
>>>
>>>None. Including not helping anyone's preparations.
>>
>>Hm. How do you define that? Total embargo for the region? Embargo for military weapons ? No subsidies ? No trade ? Force refugees back into the area by not allowing them in, but not even train them if you send them back?
>
>Rewind... 2-3 decades before. Things like "do not host, fund or train any terrorist organizations - them being anticommunist doesn't make them less terrorist".

Mostly agree, but there are cases where terrorist behaviour grew.

>Or "put your money where your mouth is and apply that free trade across the board, including communist countries - if communism is so bad, let them fail on their own".

Fully agree. Even "economic sanctions" seem newspeak-infected.

>Then, in the last months before the beginning, "do not sell weapons to anyone", "do not fund anyone", "do not promise political support to any group".

IMO hypocricy to try to stop sales of weapons where they might be used.

>Once there are refugees - it's too late for me to have any ideas what to do. The situation was created beforehand.
>


>>...But ***if*** fragmented Yugoslavia was NATO/capitalistic intent, why stop there and not create even smaller entities?
>
>I guess these are small enough to rule on remote. Having more of smaller ones makes it organizationally expensive - more handlers, more analysts, more diplomats, more spies.

Not unthinkable, but no argument for either POV

>>Still, what dire motives you think was behind UN/NATO effort?
>
>Remove a strong independent player from the field and replace it with a bunch of small colonies. Easier to rule. And while there's not much oil (there is some - I actually pass a few oil rigs while driving around), there's fertile land, there's lots of mineral stuff (lead, coal, gold, even uranium, and, news flash, Rio Tinto is interested in lithium found here). And the strategic value of the imperial (as in Roman) road from middle Europe to Asia Minor.

Value of road much decreased with shipping less of an adventure and cheaper in fuel cost. Easier to rule? Greece was able to blockade much of the EU. Now you have to add a couple of similarly sized entities - much higher probability that one or more will be in trouble some time in the future.

Certainly scavengers will lobby to further their interests, which probably will not be in line with the large part of population. But in my visualization lifted the fall of USSR the pressure Tito used to align all inner struggle against - common enemy, ahem friend and so on. With the external point gone everything swept under the rug escaped with the pressure it was put under.